Doing the Ortstock east ridge

Based on the forecast and the fact that greg got back late Friday night from a work trip, we decided for a lazy Saturday and a long(ish) Sunday this weekend. So Saturday afternoon we went to Braunwald and then Sunday we did the East ridge of the Ortstock. Nine years ago we were also on the Ortstock as part of a tour from Braunwald to the Glattalphütte, somehow that blog post never made it out of the "text coming stage"... tja. That time we came up via the hiking route from the Furggele, this time we wanted to take a more adventurous route up.

Saturday was the expected laziness: a slow morning, a later train, and then a stroll around Braunwald before checking into the hotel/hostel. The weather isn't great, but the forecast for the next day is good, so we go to bed optimistic.

Sunday starts reasonably late (it's not a mountain hut, so breakfast doesn't start super early) under cloudless blue skies and great views of the Ortstock. and it's East ridge.

We start the same way as last time: heading out of town and up, up, through the woods to the hanging valley. Across the valley and then up the end towards the Bärentritt. Here we pass the first other group of people we've seen (big packs... maybe they are also planning some climbing?). The route through the Bärentritt is nice, but certainly less dramatic than we remember (we've come a long way in the last decade), and we're up top before you know it.

Now we're moving into terra incognita. We've got a couple of descriptions from hikr and one from the SAC tourenportal, so we're pretty sure we know what to do. After a short food break we leave the path and head cross-country towards the ridge.

This starts off pretty flat, but then turns into steeper grass. After crossing a small patch of scree we start to enter a more exposed section at around 2100m (this is easily visible on the map), always heading up up. As this steepens a bit more the ice axes come out (they work sooooo well on steep grass!) and we continue up, up into the T6 part of the program. At some point we start seeing yellow/orange dots marking the way (cool! no more concern about being on the right route); these lead us ever upwards, sometimes with pretty dodgy, steeply up, up until we hit the saddle in the ridge.

Here we take another food break and put on the climbing gear (Andrea's attempt to toss her harness down the mountain is, fortunately, unsuccessful). Then we hit the rock and start climbing. The first bit of this is actual climbing (4a according to the tourenportal, but who knows...) on decent rock with a few bolts along the way. Andrea leads this and greg follows. It's soooo odd to be climbing/scrambling on limestone after all the granite in the Sierras!. Thanks to the markings and the occasional bolt, staying on route is straightforward, which is good since the rock in the scrambling sections of the route isn't what one might hope and it quickly becomes outright dangerous if you deviate (something greg discovered at one point, leading to one big rock dislodged and a big burst of adrenalin). There generally tends to be something around that the rope can be attached to. The classification of this in the tourenportal as a hochtour and not alpine climbing makes perfect sense: aside from that first pitch, this has much more in common with standard mountaineering ridge route than rock climbing.

After a couple of hours of this we're on a peak. At the time we think this is the Vorder Ortstock, but doubts emerge later and, after looking at the track, we end up being pretty sure that it was actually one of the other spires on the ridge. Still, that's where the markings led us. Everything we've read recommends not continuing along the ridge from this point (the rock is bad and it's extremely exposed), so we follow the markings into the North face and further onwards towards the Ortstock. There are a couple of small snow fields here that we cross at the top (easy) and then a larger one towards the end that we also cross at the top. This one's less easy due the amount of loose crap on top of the ice/rock, but we make it through. Then it's onwards, always staying next to the rock and following the dots until we emerge on the Ortstock itself.

This is one of those routes and peaks where you can emerge from nowhere into a crowd of hikers (always fun!), but we're late enough that there's only one person on the peak, so we don't get to have that bit of fun. Ah well, it's also nice to have the peak mostly to ourselves. :-)

After another snack break and packing the technical gear away and another snack break we head down the hiking path to the saddle between the Ortstock and the Höch Turm (there's supposedly an mountaineering route up that one too... worth considering for a future trip!), then down, down, through the Bärentritt and back down, down, down to Braunwald and the beginning of the trip home.

This was an interesting tour that, despite the low altitude, definitely deserves the ZS rating and requires some concentration. It sure would be nice if the rock was better throughout, but you take what you get. :-)


Track:
Stats: 14.3km, ~1650m up and down